Prefabrication experiments - 421 - ML(row houses) - The town house as an urban archetype

 

Urban dwellings feature the potential of densely packed zoning to increase affordability, livability, socialization, and infrastructure sharing, all pillars of sustainable cities. Their narrow frontage inscribed within a rhythmic alignment transforms the detached villa's enfilade of rooms and spaces into vertical organizations articulated to a staircase; different stairwell locations lead to various configurations. Treatises and pattern books have defined some fundamental principles: The American House Carpenter (R.G. Hatfield, 1852) illustrated construction systems and possible patterns for designing row houses found in every North American city. Montreal’s triplexes, New York’s Brownstones, Philadelphia’s rows are just three examples of how stacking floors around flight of stairs can become a centerpiece of urbanity. 

 

Typically, three or four floor arrangements are inset between party walls built along property lines to keep fire from spreading among juxtaposed units. These extending firewalls came to represent fireproofing requirements applied to medieval cities. The width of a standard city lot by a variable depth, spaces like living rooms and bedrooms are placed on either side of core spaces to benefit from natural light. The dual-exposed living areas contribute to a feeling of spatial opulence in an otherwise slim floor plate.  A multiple-floor sequence could be managed to suit multiple tenure scenarios: owner-occupied on all floors, one or two floors rented out as flats, and these even changing over time.  Seen as a prototype for efficient urban living, the townhouse has also been the subject of many research experiments. 

 

The Grow Home and The Next Home developed by Professor Avi Friedman from McGill University in the 1990s made the case for a standardized affordability through the demonstration of a type of row Core-houseadapting over time according to occupant needs. Each townhouse could suit the functional requirements of one to three households or even be divided to include a commercial or home office space on the ground floor. The Grow Home proposed a shell for owners to outfit as needed and as their potential to earn increased taking Habraken’s idea of supports and infill to the townhouse as a way of creating dynamic streetscapes from ordinary housing archetypes.

The American House-Carpenter «town house»